WebOps: Losing the quiet war against ISIS

ISIS, or the Islamic State, has had a fair amount of success spreading their message and recruiting people through social media—a task that is far more challenging than many might consider. Think about the level of effort and expertise McDonald’s uses to engage millennials in the digital sphere, and despite a marketing budget that would put some nations to shame, only 20 percent of millennials in America have ever even tried a Big Mac. Using the very same tools and platforms, ISIS has managed to get young people to leave their homes and families to join in their fight, either in places like Iraq or as a “lone wolf” terrorist, often giving up their lives in the process.

This fact wasn’t lost on the U.S. government, which recognized that an important combat theater in the war against ISIS had to be online, where they were continuing to garner support and even recruits from nations all across the globe. Of course, if McDonald’s can put the best social media minds on the planet to work to try to boost Big Mac sales, the government surely must have their own crack team of Arabic-speaking social media experts to fight the good fight in the Twittersphere and elsewhere that ISIS is permitted to publicly engage in recruiting practices…right?

Unfortunately, a recent investigation conducted by the Associated Press found that, although the government does have a team working feverishly to prevent potential recruits from turning to the dark side, they seem to be downright bad at the job.

The responsibility of the WebOps program that falls under U.S. Central Command is to engage with people in social media that are being courted by ISIS and other extremist groups and to try to convince them not to aid in the terrorist organization’s efforts. Doing so requires a thorough understanding of the culture the people live in and the language they use to interact. After all, it can be difficult to understand discussions on Twitter when they are conducted in English without having an appreciation for the digital shorthand of the day, so trying to jump into the middle of a Twitter conversation in Arabic presents a unique challenge that it appears the WebOps program has not been able to effectively manage.

“One of the things about jihadis: They are very good in Arabic,” said an Arabic specialist who previously worked on WebOps and requested anonymity. He went on to describe one instance in which the words for “authority” and “salad” got mixed up in translation, prompting the Twitter accounts being used by WebOps to be openly ridiculed by ISIS for discussing “Palestinian salad” in their efforts to stop recruitment.

You might suspect that such a mistaken Tweet couldn’t have too much of an effect on the program—until you come to find that WebOps has been doctoring its own numbers by reposting the same content from multiple user names repeatedly to demonstrate the high degree of “engagement” they have with the enemy.

“You send it like a blind copy. You program it to send a tweet every five minutes to the whole list individually from now until tomorrow,” the former employee said. “Then you see the reports and it says yesterday we sent 5,000 engagements. Often that means one Tweet on Twitter.” Those engagements are then added to a report management would provide to CENTCOM, indicating their high output without providing any insight into how they achieved that number.

In fact, the WebOps team, which is made up of a combination of military personnel and contractors, are responsible for their own appraisals. Each interaction is graded by the person conducting it, and perhaps unsurprisingly, very few of them indicated that they weren’t doing a great job.

“You shouldn’t grade your own homework,” said a former U.S. military officer and data specialist that conducted a 2014 report on the WebOps program. His report found WebOps to be systemically flawed. “The argument was that WebOps was the only program at Central Command that was directly engaging the enemy and that it couldn’t function if its staff was constantly distracted by assessment,” he added.

The program is run by the Alabama-based Colsa Corporation, but they have redirected media requests to CENTCOM, who has thus far declined to respond to allegations regarding the ineffectiveness of the program, or recent whistleblower complaints regarding conflicts of interest within WebOps and Colsa. Allegations include lavish dinners, funded by Colsa, for senior leadership within the program, and issues with personnel routinely drinking alcohol while working. The accusations of drinking on the job were then corroborated by two more whistleblowers who came forward to say drinking was a common practice—even while working with classified documentation.

It’s important to note, however, that the primary whistleblower presenting these allegations of alcohol abuse and conflicts of interest has been reported to be a manager at a company that lost a recent bid for a similar contract to the one Colso currently has with CENTCOM. Although that doesn’t prove the allegations are false, it represents a conflict of interest in itself.

Whether WebObs is running poorly because of conflicts of interest and drinking, or whether it’s just underperforming due to poor policies and procedures, the outcome is the same. WebObs is currently failing in its mission to engage with the enemy and cut them off from using the web as a force multiplier. Dramatic changes will need to be made under President Trump and new Secretary of Defense James Mattis in order to put the United States at the forefront of the digital battle with terrorism, or we risk continuing to lose the quiet war that rages in parallel to the one we see on the news.

Image courtesy of the American Center for Law and Justice

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About the Author

Alex Hollings
Alex Hollings served as an active duty Marine for six and a half years before being medically retired from service. As an athlete, Hollings has raced exotic cars, played Marine Corps football and college rugby, fought in cages, and even wrestled alligators. As a scholar, he has earned a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as undergraduate degrees in Corporate and Organizational Communications and Business Management.

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Michelle B

You raise a very good point.
I assume (for the sake of clarity) that by "these people" we are talking specifically about those Americans (by birth or naturalization) or recent U.S. immigrants (residents, students, refugees, asylees) who are successfully recruited (or at least persuaded to "lone wolf" acts of violence) by ISIS or other terrorist groups.
My *perception* is that the people who feel like they are stuck in relative misery (relative to the blatant alternatives they see around them), with no visible pathway to get from where they are to where they would rather be, are far more susceptible to any welcoming hand that reaches down to pull them into a "better" place. As one example that I have seen in my own neighborhood: A kid in inner city poverty who never sees his parents except when they're tired and angry and is perpetually frustrated at never having money for even the "basic" things other kids at his school take for granted is going to feel loved and welcomed by a gang of his peers, and is probably going to willingly overlook the negative aspects and enjoy the net positive of having money to do what he wants (never mind where it came from) and acceptance from people who seem to understand him....and who praise him for his bravery and daring for acts that will also likely put him in prison someday. So is he disgruntled, entitled, marginalized? I would argue a bit of all three. That doesn't mean his choice was inevitable (plenty of people in similar circumstances choose a longer, harder, eventually more rewarding route), but it does seem to make him more susceptible to that negative influence as an "easy" pathway out of what seems to be endlessly unbearable circumstances.
So my *perception* continues to be applied in less familiar circumstances--gunmen who shoot up theaters, schools, malls, night clubs; or people who drive vehicles into crowds of people; or ax- or machete-weilding people on trains or in museums; or suicide bombers, etc.--none of which seems to be rational behavior in any way (for one thing, how could their actions make anything better for them, by making things worse for everyone else? I know misery loves company, but still...) Some people are just plain crazy, legitimately out of their minds, off their meds, whatever. Some people genuinely, passionately, coldly-calculatingly believe in their cause or their grounds for revenge, or whatever.
But (and again, this is my *perception*) there are some who get so tired of poverty, being hungry all the time, living in filth, being sick from the unsanitary water (yes, even in America), being at the bottom of society and always ignored or, worse, singled out for ridicule and shoved to the outside edges of civilization....that when someone offers them a chance to be a part of something "greater," and gives them a chance to get back at others who (perhaps unwittingly, but sometimes purposely) made their lives more difficult (or maybe are completely unrelated but somehow "representative" of those who did)....they jump at the chance to do something that empowers them and gets rid of the overwhelming sense of helplessness and vulnerability they are so sick and tired of experiencing day after day.
However, that doesn't necessarily make my perception accurate. I haven't really taken the time to question and analyze the basis for that perception.
Some of it is first hand experience and life lessons about human nature that I tend to assume can be broadly applicable to the human race, at least in a generalized way.
Some of it is reading histories and biographies--from the distant or recent past--and absorbing the lessons others have learned as they've interacted with the world (for example, people in poverty that have been pushed from place to place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, African countries seem to be the most susceptible to embracing the Taliban, al-Qaeda, jihad).
Some of it is what I read in the news, as media outlets attempt to uncover who these people are and what their motivations might have been and how they are viewed by family/co-workers/neighbors.
We always seem to want an explanation for why things happened they way they did, and whether it could have been prevented--not just to avoid the current tragedy, but also because if there are warning signs, maybe we can be more observant and do something to prevent similar tragedies in the future. (If I can reach out to an inner city kid and give him hope, a sense of greater purpose, a drive to stick with the longer, harder road, maybe I can head off the gang-trajectory at the pass. If I can reach out to a war veteran to let him know I'm thinking about him today, maybe I can help avoid a suicide for another day. If I can reach out to a struggling immigrant (of any variety) and warmly welcome them and let them know that our neighborhood is a safe place for their kids to play, and if they need help with that broken faucet we can easily pitch in...maybe they will weigh the alternatives and decide integrating into the great American melting pot--even while they retain their cultural identity within their family--isn't such a bad idea after all.)
I don't think there are any quick fixes to prevent or eliminate acts of terrorism. I doubt that bureaucracy is an effective tool to intercept whatever alluring messages ISIS is sending to American citizens and refugees and to attempt to head them off at the pass....but at least it is one tool. I don't think that reducing the number of refugees (or, going to a greater extreme, cutting off all immigration....or even deporting anyone--even 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation Muslim Americans--with any hint of ties to Islam, extremist or moderate) is going to prevent and eliminate all acts of terrorism. (No do I like the high social or financial cost of such extreme actions relative to the limited benefits. Which isn't to say that I don't wholeheartedly approve of actually enforcing our existing immigration laws and taking a careful look at every single person who crosses our border, even the sweet white haired grandmas with a tupperware dish full of homemade cookies. You just never know.)
I suppose I am a naive human being with relatively limited world experience, but I think the most effective (albeit excruciatingly slow) tool we have is our ability to be observant, compassionate, patient, firm, and to roll up our sleeves and get to work helping each other, one person, one day at a time. That won't prevent the crazies off their meds, or the extremists who feel wildly justified in their cause...but those people (thankfully) still seem to be in the minority (for all the lingering psychological damage they're able to cause.)
Hopefully my higher education wasn't too much of a waste of money, especially considering that most of the money spent was my own (plus interest, ugh). ;-)

Recon6

I was always under the impression and wanted to Believe, that everything America does will be the Best... sadly, such a limited view is so far wrong as to be ludicrous... and I always wait for the real Intellectuals to step forward and remedy such a problem... then decades later someone writes a book telling the 'truth' and I realize ppl were running around protecting their asses and assets and many others were left out to tend for themselves... guess we can't always Lead in this New World.. nor should we try... but in this instance failure will prove to be unacceptable...6

Recon6

I am forced to question whether anyone really looks at what is happening with these ppl....do these Americans merely ignore what is happening elsewhere ?? When I mentioned to my son and his associates what has happened in Europe with refugees, their response was, "Well America isn't Europe"... and these ppl are exactly the "disgruntled, entitled..impassioned, but definitely Not marginalized".... I'm beginning to question the bottomless pit of funding for 'higher education' provided....6

KEV

Concerning article for every Twitter / digital communication no doubt dead letter drops and old sandals messages. Wonder if the same happening in the EU?

Sanmon

Yea but now you have to figure out what size Big Mac you want:
Big Mac®
Grand Mac™
Mac Jr™